WENDY MURPHY: Not the time to be silent on sanctuary cities

Saturday

Apr 29, 2017 at 12:01 AM

Wendy Murphy

A handful of cities and towns in Massachusetts have enacted local rules declaring themselves “Sanctuary Cities,” meaning they have policies in place that restrict the powers of local police with regard to the enforcement of federal immigration laws. Cambridge, Somerville, and Northampton are on the list. Several other communities have proposals pending, including Newton, Belmont and Lowell.

No doubt opponents will be painted as hateful xenophobes with no humanity, which will shame some into remaining silent about their objections. Considering what happened in Paris last week, now is not the time to worry about what others think.

President Trump emphasized again last week that his administration is seeking to deport only illegals who have committed serious crimes. And while his order threatening to withhold federal funds to sanctuary jurisdictions should probably be narrowed to avoid legal problems, such that only funds specifically related to the capturing of dangerous criminals would be withheld from sanctuary jurisdictions, reasonable people should be asking why any community would want to provide a safe harbor for a murderer or rapist, illegal or not?

Proponents love to paint opponents as racist Neanderthals who believe that all immigrants are dangerous. This is silly. Nobody is saying that all illegals are dangerous, or even that all terrorists in this country are here illegally. In fact, of the 19 terrorists who murdered thousands of innocent people on 9/11, only five were in this country illegally. But it matters that 25% of the masterminds were illegal because fewer lives would have been lost if 14 rather than 19 men had been available to attack America on that fateful day.

Sanctuary cities, like loose borders, always present a security risk; just ask France. That country has endured a disproportionately high number of terrorist attacks in the recent past, which many believe are the result of France's bleeding heart open-borders policy that for years welcomed people from all countries, without judgment.

France is in the midst of a painful lesson about immigration policies and public safety, but in certain parts of Massachusetts, public safety doesn't seem to matter. Hypocrisy doesn't matter, either, because the same people who support sanctuary cities won't support building a housing project in their neighborhood so that illegal kids can attend school with their children.

What does matter is that sanctuary city activists know that bringing more illegals into this country will grow the ranks of the Democratic party. As with too many high profile controversies, the real agenda has nothing to do with humanity. Put another way, if immigrants started voting Republican, Democrats would dump the humanity rhetoric in a hot minute and fight for immediate deportation of all illegals, without due process.

When party-growth is the real story, people who care about things like the economy and public safety have a responsibility to speak out about the risks and costs involved. Massachusetts already has a reputation for being a dangerously open borders state, as indicated by a 25% uptick in the population of illegals in the past decade alone, which has put a substantial economic strain on social programs and public funds. Many believe the Marathon bombing would not have happened had the Tsarnaev brothers opted to live elsewhere, but they chose Massachusetts, no doubt because of the generous social programs that other states don’t offer.

It doesn’t matter that most of our ancestors were immigrants. The world was a different place back then, and we could afford to be generous with our borders. Those days are over. It also doesn’t matter that most illegal aliens are nice people, and that most criminals are American citizens, (though California’s prisons are reportedly filled with 50% illegal immigrants.) It matters that sanctuary cities are magnets to criminal illegal aliens because criminals the ones looking to live in places where local law enforcement’s hands are tied. Law-abiding illegals know very well the feds are not looking for them.

None of this means we should not provide assistance to law-abiding illegal aliens. We should, not by establishing sanctuary cities but by working together to ensure that marginalized people who are not committing crimes on our soil have the support they need to live full and productive lives, in all our cities and towns.

Wendy Murphy teaches law at New England Law in Boston and a television legal analyst. A former prosecutor, she specializes in the representation of crime victims in civil and criminal litigation.